Les P'tit Parapluies, Rouen

Rouen is cute. Definitely a town they forgot to burn down, all leaning wood-framed houses, cute curving alleys and big churches. I mean *big* churches. Man, do they like their gods towering over them. But I digress: this blog is about food, and food we shall discuss.

Les P'tit Parapluies is nominally a modern European (more of that in a minute) restaurant in an old umbrella factory on the edges (i.e. walking distance from the cathedral) of Rouen centre. Hwngo had done his research, and this looked like one of two possibly good places to check out the non-traditional cuisine in Rouen. He's pretty darn good at snuffling out decent food, so off we went.

What we found was the plight of French culture in a microcosm. Well, in an impeccably put together, difficult-to-put-your-finger-on-the-problem neat room with a perfectly laid table and well-turned-out staff. Got it. It's like listening to classical music. You know you love the Messiah, you know it's a great piece of music, you've paid to hear a decent choir and orchestra, but this is the season where they just don't quite get it together. All the ingredients are there, but somehow they add to less than the sum of their parts. I s'pose we're back to cooking there really, aren't we? So. The ingredients were good. The food was competent. The look was good (if a little Euro-hotel in places), the staff were friendly. But the service wasn't quite right: we waited ages for bread, then the staff kept bringing us more - damn good bread, so we weren't complaining about that- not because it was the right time and sense to do so, but more because they really wanted to please.

And so to a sex metaphor. Sometimes what you want in bed isn't a transaction, a by-the-numbers quickie, but a sharing of souls, a sensitivity of them to your needs and you to theirs. Now I'm not suggesting that we should get way over-friendly with the sommelier, but a great restaurant experience has much in common with that style of sex... you feel cared for, listened to, but so discreetly that when asked you couldn't say when the extra fork arrived or why it all flowed so well, you just know that it was special. And in return, you get it; you hit that moment when you understand that this is indeed a great thing, and are humbled that someone could make you concentrate so much on their art and give you such a high from it. And then you pay, but hey, that's only fair. Les P'tit was a high-class hooker rather than a proper French mistress; all the curves and lacy bits, but there was no way she was going to kiss you. The food was competently put together, but my sense was that the person who wrote the menus and bought the ingredients wasn't the same as the person who put it together in the kitchen. There were bum notes; my pigeon was well cooked, the potatocake with it was excellent, but they really shouldn't have been together. The asparagus amuse-bouche were good but I'd had the same and better in Switzerland (Switzerland for god's sake) the week before; the desserts were over-sweet and cooked at too low a heat... the list goes on...

Now be well aware: this is not a bad restaurant. The food is reasonable. It's just that it doesn't quite live up to either its own aspirations or to the pool of equivalent European restaurants to which it's aspired. Which is a shame. France has a long tradition of great food and serious chefs even in the most back-of-the-woods places (roadside caffs, yum!), but it's slowly being lost. There's a Thatcher revolution in the air there, a sense of moving into the modern world that has young madames driving past the boulangeries in the mornings and picking up ready meals in the hypermarches at night. And just as the UK lost much of its traditions during its own Thatcher years then reinvented them as heritage pastiche, so too is France going down that same path. It saddens me, but I won't be surprised to see more French restos starting up with neat modern decor and the spirit seeping from its expensive menu, more French food whose commonality is with the cookbook rather than the soul of the ingredients available today. I hope La France can sort out its social problems, its massive unemployment, its impassable social strata, but I fear it will pay a very high price.